"All great discoveries are made by men whose feelings run ahead of their thinking" -
C. H. Parkhurst

Sunday, 30 March 2008

8 months later...

...and I'm thinking about posting again.

Maybe it's the sun poking her wares through the trees and making me feel all creative, or the semi-illusory prospect of life maybe going in a new direction and my feeling benevolent with the excitement of it all... or more probably it's the fact I've got another Admap article coming out soon (and it's not about sad-vertising you'll be glad to hear) and I might just have something worthwhile and substantial to share with you (I'm not one for 'interesting things I saw today' blogging, maybe I just don't see enough interesting things).

A romantic explanation for my hiatus might be that I finally got a job playing piano in a cabaret or my book idea "Toilets of London" is finally to get published. But truth is I've been putting most of my energy into the 9-5 (really the 10 to 9).... and into this...

In June 2007, along with 15 other bright-eyed advertising peeps about 5-8 years into the industry, I committed the next 15 months of my weekends to reading all the best thinking our industry has ever felt important enough to put into print (and that's a lot...more than a Masters-worth of reading)... spitting some out along the way, trying in vain to digest other morsels, and greedily allowing the great majority of it to nourish me and turn me into an altogether better-rounded and more convincing advertising practitioner.

The best bit (and the real reason I've not been here) is that I've had to use up all my words writing essays with original and compelling points of view on everything I've read... Comms Planning, Metrics, Consumers, Brands and Creativity... I've now got an opinion on everything, my brain hurts and I'm terrible company in the pub.

It's been magic, the true academic in me has had a field day. I just wish I could do the IPA Excellence Diploma as a full-time job...and I wish everyone else in the industry got to do it too, because frankly it's scary what we don't know. And it's scary how many of us get by without reading the important treasures some great minds have left for us. We've been driving advertising without a licence...and how we're not in a heap at the bottom of some dusty ravine, I do not know.

This blog...

... kind of came about as a result of an article I wrote in Admap about "Sad-vertising". Until I find something else to write about and as long as negative emotions are unfairly discriminated against in advertising, this is a place to enthuse over the deep, the sad, the melancholy and the meaningful.

About Me

I am a Creative Planner aged 31. Originally from Dublin, I've worked for McCann Erickson and DDB in London, and I currently freelance throughout Europe. Prior to advertising, I worked as an academic research psychologist. I'm happiest when playing piano and I'm an eternal optimist beneath a facade of critical cynicism.